Growing up in Pasadena, and covering stories for three decades there as a journalist, I’ve grown used to architectural preservation stories.

Lots of them.

Same story arc essentially every time: Hallowed building, whether recognized by all as that or not, threatened with demolition by developer seeking “highest and best use” of the property. Word goes out. Preservation groups rally. Passionate hearings at the Design Commission, the Planning Commission, then the City Council. Building is either deemed some kind of historic monument and saved for future generations (Yay!) or meets the wrecking ball (Boo! Hiss!)

The Huntington Hotel — you did know, didn’t you, that the entire original turn-of-the-century building was razed and then rebuilt at like 8/7 scale so that the guest rooms could be made bigger?

The Blacker House — stripped of its original Greene & Greene-designed interior lighting, the pieces of which were sold by the nefarious Texas antiques dealer who bought the house off an unsuspecting widow for more than the $1.2 million he’d pay for the entire house. At least this led to a city law specifically protecting designs by Charles and Henry Greene, the greatest architects the city has ever known.

The Pasadena Athletic Club — the great Sylvanus Marston building was razed to build the godawful Plaza Pasadena mall, but at least the wonderful preservation group Pasadena Heritage came into being because of that battle.

Older cities have better architecture, and Pasadena is relatively old, for Southern California.

West Covina is a newer city. It was mostly orange groves at the turn of the 20th century. Pasadena has dozens, maybe more than a hundred, entries in David Gebhard and Bob Winter’s seminal book, “An Architectural Guidebook to Los Angeles,” which lists every building of note in the county.

West Covina has one entry.

And now West Covina wants to tear down that one building.

It’s St. Martha’s Episcopal Church on Lark Ellen. Yes, it’s been allowed to fall into disrepair. Yes, the congregation dwindled and joined up with another congregation. Yes, the architect, Carleton M. Winslow, Jr., is not a major name in the field, known only for another church or two.

But the building is not only a knockout, it’s a Mid-Century Modern knockout, the currently coolest historical architectural style, and one increasingly in danger. Not the houses built in that style — they fetch a pretty penny. But the office and public buildings can be rather misunderstood, and deemed impractical. Sometimes they were built on the cheap as well, with interiors that need a lot of TLC after the plywood veneer starts to peel off.

The L.A. Conservancy reports St. Martha’s was one of 35 outstanding churches and synagogues from throughout the world profiled in the 1957 publication “Religious Buildings for Today,” published by the American Institute of Architects.

And yet this most noteworthy building in the city was not deemed worthy of preservation by the West Covina City Council. The hired-gun report commissioned on its worthiness determined, as those paying for the report desired, that there was no architectural significance to St. Martha’s. Not being used to such fights, there wasn’t much public outcry. The plan is to use the property for a big apartment building.

Nothing wrong with apartment buildings. But there is such a thing as adaptive reuse, and that’s what should happen for St. Martha’s. A development can go up around the best building in West Covina, playing off its distinctive post-and-beam style. And the original building can either be used as a much-needed community center for the apartment dwellers, or turned into dwelling units on its interior.

That’s the only sane thing to do for a city that values its past.

Ready for a preservation fight, West Covinans? It would do the San Gabriel Valley good to preserve the best of what we have.

Larry Wilson is public editor of the San Gabriel Valley Newspapers and a member of the Los Angeles News Group editorial board. Twitter: @PublicEditor. larry.wilson@langnews.com

Larry Wilson is public editor of the San Gabriel Valley Newspapers and a columnist and member of the editorial board for the Southern California News Group. He was hired as editorial page editor of the Pasadena Star-News in 1987, and then for 12 years was that paper's editor. He now writes editorials for SCNG, a local column in the Star-News on Wednesdays and a regional column for the group on Sundays.